The projectThis project is about visualizing and bringing to attention the local cyclic food chain in the shape of a fully operating prototype of a market stand for a small scale organic farmer, selling vegetables, seedlings, grains etc. directly from the farm to end consumers in the city centre, without linear packaging systems, with analogue equipment (no miniaturized electronics).

Purpose
The purpose of the project is to raise questions and initiate discussions about the way that we have chosen to organize our food system by visualizing an existing alternative solution based on cyclic thinking.

BackgroundBefore us humans became farmers, we used to live as hunter- gatherers for some 200.000 generations. Some of us still do. Only since the last 200 generations some of us live as farmers or base our food production on farming, and since 3 generations we live with what is known as industrial agriculture.This way of organizing our food production, transforming the landscape into large monocultures, using chemical fertilizers and pesticides and fossil fuel based farming equipment, is extremely harmful to all natural systems, supporting the very same activity.
Large scale food production, processing and distribution with linear packaging systems and fossil fuel based transportation systems becomes the “logical” way of completing the food chain to reach us end consumers.

Image: seedling tray, stainless steel

We end up eating the chemicals that is required if the food is to fit into this system and we are left with the toxic waste that is the inevitable bi-product. In the report from the World Bank,”Turn down the heat” published in November 2012, it is predicted that the raise of temperature will exceed 4 degrees Celsius before the end of this century. In that case, the question whether we will be able to produce any food at all on this planet, must be asked.

Image: wooden former of papercups of used newspaper

Are there any alternatives? Our memory is short in this respect. Only three generations ago, when my mother grew up, there was no industrial agriculture, there was no computers, there was no barcodes, there was no electronic equipment in shops apart from electric light, there was no linear packaging systems, there was no infrastructure that would have allowed the food chain to become global on this scale, and yes, the food quality was much higher.

Image: Silvio & Beatrice, Azienda Agricola Corbari

Poly-cultural organic agriculture operating on a local level applying principles of cyclic thinking can be found, however, operating in a structurally unsustainable society some of the aspects of cyclic thinking may be lost. It is difficult to operate any food distribution today without the use of linear packaging systems, fossil fuel based transportation systems, miniaturized electronics that is a part of operating any business today.